


TTYNKAP Ultimania

by joudama



Series: The Things You Never Knew About People [2]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Ultimania
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-04-26 22:58:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5023882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joudama/pseuds/joudama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An explainer as to all the world building and kanji-nerding that went into the "The Things You Never Knew About People" series. AKA, the mother of all author's notes on a fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Brief History of Wutai

Yeah, so, in college? I was a history major. Yeah, sure, it was WWII Germany focusing on the Holocaust, still. Once a history-minded person,  _always_ a history-minded person. You have been warned. 

The other warning is that I worked as a professional translator (Japanese to English, but I had to be able to read basic Chinese so I can correct test machine translations from Chinese to English as well).  If you ever wonder about my language and culture geekery (especially my Wutai love), yeah, these two little factoids about me should explain it _all_.

This is a revised version of this, written after I wrote more fic involving Wutai and did more world-building.  I sort of wish I had done all the research I have done _now_ (ie: a _lot_ ) before I had started, because I would have named things differently, but ahh, well, too late now, because I am NOT up for all the fic-editing retconning would take.

So, the game says jackall about Wutai, and I can't ever leave well enough alone. >XD 

Basically, the city of Wutai is to the north, and is the traditional capital of Wutai. As a fun trivia fact, the name "Wutai" is taken from "Wutai-shan," a _really_ famous mountain in China (one of the Five Sacred Buddhist mountains), which gave me free rein to basically rip China and Chinese Buddhist mythos off for names. 

All the Chinese characters for Wutai are the ones used in the original game (thanks, Chinese wiki!), not the new and alternate ones used in later games/expansions/Squeenix milking the cash cow: 

Wutai - 五檯 [wǔtái]

Since the "wu" character in the name for "Wutai" means "five," it was for me a natural assumption that the island is made up of five main provinces, all of which were formerly independent countries. The different provinces (縣) of Wutai are: 

Beizhou (北州) - This is the tiny island on the top of the continent and the tip of the Wutai closest to it.  In regards to the  Wutai mafia clans in TTYNKAP, the Yang are on that island, and the Li clan are located in the part of Beizhou located on the main Wutai island.

Taishang (台上) - Taishang uses a simplification of the 'tai' character in "Wutai," and "shang" means "top."  It's the top of the main island of Wutai, which is how I've retconned the name I chose onto it.

Gwongnaam (廣南) - The kanji for the name mean "wide south," and the is "south" because it's the bottom of the "Chinese" areas which have historically had close ties, and north of the Great Forest which sets the northern areas apart from the southern, non-tonal-language-speaking parts of Wutai.

Chochung (朝中) - This, for any of you who have read "A Hope in Hell," is the Wutai Korea--the name comes from the first character in the name for "Korea," plus the character for "middle," since it's in the middle of the continent; also, this lets me put a mountain range in the middle of the continent, where it serves to break up the Chinese-influenced languages and the Altaic ones as a physical barrier--thus, Northern, Guangnanese, and Taishangese are tonal languages, where as Chochungese and Yamatan aren't).  Also, Chochung is... _weird_.  Yeah, we're gonna go with "weird." (see: A Hope in Hell, the crossover fic that has since had elements incorporated into other fic and into my understanding of Wutai.)  There is a reason for this weirdness, and if y'all want to know, I can write up another Author's Notes Ultimania for A Hope in Hell and explain why it's weird and some of the distinctive Chochung history and culture that have caused it to be a lot more isolationist than the rest of Wutai as well as having a degree of autonomy that other areas of Wutai don't have.

Yamato (大和) - the southernmost part of Wutai.  Putting Yamato at the bottom of the island helps explain the language drift, because um, yeah. Japanese and Mandarin Chinese don't sound a _thing_ alike (aside from the loanwords from kanji, but that's like saying English and Latin are alike 'cause a lot of English words have Latin roots), but Japanese and Korean sound a _whole_ lot alike and have extremely similar grammar (which is part of why some linguists think that Japanese and Korean aren't actually Altaic, but a language family consisting of Korean-Japanese-Ainu, and I'm stopping this line of thought now before I go off on tangent), and Korean has a lot of similarities in vocabulary to Chinese thanks to borrowing, same as Japanese, but Korean is waaay closer to the Chinese pronunciations (i.e., the word for king,  王, is "wang" in Mandarin and "hwang" in Korean, but "ou" in Japanese).  So the language drift is Mandarin (Beizhou and Taishang) -> Cantonese (Gwongnaam) -> Korean (Chochung) -> Japanese (Yamato). 

I'm going to go into more details on the names in another installment of my author's notes Ultimania, namely the one where I explain all the names of people and places I've used so far.  By the way, there are other, ancient names for these areas and older kingdoms that were used pre-Kisaragi Dynasty, but let's _not_ go into that right now, since I don't need to show all of my unseemly nerdiness as once. ^^;;   

Since a guy named "Godo Kisaragi" is the emperor (and fun fact, on the Chinese wiki, the page for Yuffie gives her name now in Asian name order, 'Kisaragi You Fei'), I'm assuming the current emperors were _once_ Yamatan but have long since assimilated to the north--"Kisaragi" is a Japanese surname, but "Godo" and "Yuffie" are NOT (Yuffie's name in the Chinese version, however, looks (to my admittedly poor and untrained eye) like it could be an actual Chinese name.)Those names are not even kind of Japanese, same way as in the city of Wutai was so not even kind of Japan. So these point to a takeover from the south that happened in the past.

My theory is this: Wutai, Yamato in particular, had a very imperialistic, expansionist past, and it happened in waves--first was the unification of Wutai, then came the expansion in the rest of the world.

The first round of Yamatan expansions was the Kanagawa clan unifying Yamato, and then expanding out to take over all of Wutai.  The story of this is told in one of the Three Wutai Classics of Literature, "The Romance of the Five Kingdoms" (I have no shame), and the entire island was eventually unified under the Kanagawa emperors.  This was, at first, a good thing.  But much like Ancient Rome, the Kanagawa empire was built on taking over other areas and continually expanding.  Plus, the last Kanagawa emperor was rather bloodthirsty and determined to take over the world, and once Wutai was firmly a single empire and they had an army horde to make the Mongols cry, off they went to, well, take over the world.  Which they did a very, very good job of, until it began to collapse under both its own weight, internal dissent, and uprisings from military leaders, and the Kisaragi Dynasty began.  Events that ultimately lead up to the fall of the Kanagawa empire is told in another of the Wutai Classics of Literature, "The Annals of the Silver Dragon" (like I said, _no shame_.)

Before the Kanagawa Yamatan expansion, Wutai was five small countries, but was unified under the Kanagawa Dynasty.  The last Kanagawa did some pretty crappy things all in all, and is part of why there were so few Cetra left (cf: the Cetra Diaspora and History of the World pt 1, but warning, both of those are old and need revising) and why the rest of the world hated Wutai.

The Kanagawa unified Wutai, but disdained the other areas of Wutai (they were exploiting the other areas more than anything else) and remained in Nankyo, the capital of Yamato and the seat of their power.  It was the first Kisaragi emperor, Kisaragi-no-Takenobu, who moved the capital north.  There were many reasons for this, and one of which was a repudiation of the ways of the Kanagawa.  Eventually, the Kisaragi "northernized," losing many of their Yamatan ways and the Yamatan language.

The Kisaragi emperors tried, at first, to keep control of the empire outside of Wutai, but this was a time before telephones and such, and the 'barbarians' didn't much like the Wutai, and eventually the Wutai withdrew because they didn't much want to be there any more, and saw it as part of the whole mess the Kanagawa had left behind.  And proving that the emperors were sill Yamatan through and through, decided the past Yamatan emperors got burned when they went too far, and pulled an Augustus Caesar on the empire and decided no going past a certain point--in this case, off the island. They went isolationist, because d00d, that's what Japan _does_. So that's what Wutai did--they pulled inward, and the Kisaragi emperors worked on keeping Wutai unified--at stomping out dangerous "regional" pride and identity and replacing them with a national one (which is why Yuffie is very much "I'm Wutai!" and not "I'm Yamatan!")--and self-sufficient, and all was fine and dandy until ShinRa was like, "Yeah, so, _about that_." 

At one point, the Wutai emperor stretched at _least_ as far as Midgar at one point--and my reasoning for that is the extensive use of characters in Midgar on all things official, such as the numbers of the sections (they use the OLD SKOOL number characters, the ones used on money and stuff for official things--ones that couldn't easily be altered), and one exit signs and such around the city, while everything _else_ is written in English (Last Order, everything in the files was English, AC, all the signs are in English)--I posit these as remnants of a Yamatan past, one that the ShinRa company incorporated as a way of proving their validity to rule. 

And why Yamatan? Because the reading of the characters used for the ShinRa logo are all from the Japanese readings of those characters; "shin" (god) and "ra," (net; also the characters used for Ancient Rome; in Chinese it can also mean "invite"...interpret these as you will, yo); the Mandarin readings are "xin" and "luo." Since those sound not that much like "Shinra" (company: ShinRa; family name: Shinra. I told y'all I was anal), yeah, it would imply that the characters used for the name were based on a _Yamatan_ reading, which would indicate the Yamatans had once overrun the other continents before eventually, as all empires do, collapsing in under its own weight. But an impact would have been left over from any kind of invasion and occupation. 

 Also in regard to the name "ShinRa" in characters, in FFX, you meet a character named "Shinra," and it's hinted at that his family is the one that eventually becomes the FF7 Shinra family. Yeah, so, in FFX? The name "Shinra" isn't written in kanji, it's written in katakana, like any foreign name is. Katakana that have been _replaced_ with characters by FF7, something that probably any important family would have done, or tried to do. 

Which leads to back to another point: Why the hell Midgar has signs in Wutai Characters.

Basically, everyone in Midgar knows what "chukou/deguchi" means...it's "exit," and they would say it as "Exit," not "deguchi" or "chukou" or any of the other Wutai readings--the Midgaran reading would be "exit." ...and after ShinRa falls, when there's no more Midgar to speak of, just Edge, there are no more "official" things with characters. With the fall of ShinRa and its need to comp an empire for legitimacy, there was no more need for characters.  

Also, related to nothing, Professor Hojo's name in the Japanese game is written in kanji as well (which fucked me UP when I first started playing Crisis Core, because I didn't realize the guy I was trusting was THAT Hojo, until I ended up deadeded and my "Dead Zack" count went up nigh exponentially, before I stopped, glared, went, "Wait a minute, who _is_ this guy...Houjou hakushiIIIIIT, THAT'S NOT HOUJOU THAT'S _HOJO_!"), probably because "Hojo" is a Japanese name. Now, you look at Hojo, and he doesn't exactly look like he's Wutai, does he. Which makes me think the name is one of the remnants of the Yamatan imperialist past. Another clue is the fact that o-mamori, which even the Ultima guide says are from Wutai but are "for some reason" (cop out, much?) sold in Midgar. You don't just have stuff like that unless there's a past involved, yo.In the same way, seeing how there are no kanji in certain areas, specifically the ones further to the south, shows that the Wutai expansion didn't make it out that far: they stopped--or _were_ stopped--before they took over the entire world (and yes, this _is_ the kind of thing I notice when I play video games).Even going with the "there is a large Wutai population" (which could certainly be true in a city like Midgar, and in fact I would say the sector with Wall Market is actually "Little Yamato" because of all the Wutai graffiti), but that doesn't explain the sectors being numbered in old-fashioned characters and random official signs that were in characters under ShinRa, but not after ShinRa fell (there are NO characters in Edge--everything is English.)

So all of this, to me, especially given how easily everyone went to war with Wutai when Wutai really wasn't a threat, kind of indicates lots of bad feelings that went pretty far back, and it all adds up to Wutai having had a much more warlike past and having actually been the invaders once upon a time, because the legacy of invasion lasts a long, long time, and leaves scars. 

...Plus, have y'all _seen_ some of the character designs now that they have the technical know-how to not have giant blocks for hands and cube-heads?! I saw some caps from Dirge of Cerberus, and was like, "...Turk!Vincent looks more Asian than Yuffie. By, like, a _lot_." And when I first watched Advent Children, I went, "Cloud looks like a blond-haired, blue-eyed Japanese man, and Tifa looks like Utada Hikaru.  Yeah."

The legacies of invasion, kiddies. Sometimes, they're _genetic_.  The Wutai left a _lot_ of things behind, namely, bad blood and uh, _children_.

Having a unified, imperialist past and thus still being unified in a way totally unlike anywhere else on the planet--everywhere else on Gaia seems to be set up as "independent" city-states, which is why ShinRa could just take over everything one city at a time--Gaia is completely un-unified, aside from ShinRa, and therefore not a threat to them, and by making the city-states dependent on them (which they had to do by convincing each place, and as can be extrapolated from the stories in Corel and Gongaga, and how they had to be talking into allowing ShinRa in), they were able to slowly exert more power and become the de facto government--and meant there was no one to regulate _them_ , because eventually they were more powerful than the small and _independent_ city-states.  There was no one central government to regulate them or impose any kind of rules.

But Wutai was different.Wutai was a vast island that was completely isolated and that had no need for ShinRa.ShinRa's way of getting in one city-state at a time wouldn't work for an actual _country_ with an established past and bureaucracy that was running just fine on it's own (and you can NOT beat Asia for bureaucracy; ShinRa was probably beating their heads against a wall dealing with a slow-moving bureaucracy that had been in place for _centuries_ , and a people that saw no reason whatsoever to get on the ShinRa boat--they wanted to be left alone, thanks.  
  
Which is precisely why ShinRa was so determined to take over Wutai, and why they didn't do anything to rebuild Wutai after they took it over--ShinRa's whole problem with Wutai had been that it was _too_ unified.They needed Wutai either in pieces or completely subjugated to them.Wutai's very unification is why it took ShinRa so long to defeat them--Wutai, unlike the small city-states, actually has an _army_.A very well-trained army, in fact, and that's why it took ten years to defeat them even though ShinRa was better armed, and why so many Wutai were able to infiltrate Midgar.ShinRa had bigger guns and more powerful individual soldiers (aka, SOLDIERs), but Wutai had had an army for centuries and were far, far better trained, both in military fighting and in stealth.ShinRa thought they could just throw big guns and super-soldiers at Wutai and take over quickly; they then learned about the power of a highly-trained military that had elite _guerilla_ _squads_ , plus the "you're-boned" that happens when you're fighting a better trained army on their _home turf_.  
  
Just think Sparta-meets-the Viet Cong, and you see how it is it took ShinRa _ten years_ to win.City-states in other parts of Gaia probably saw ShinRa's army and was like, "Yes, of _course_ you can come here _, plzdon'tkillus_ " (and why people were willing to go halfway across the planet to join ShinRa's army; there was nothing like it where they were from; at most they had small militias), especially since the last time the world had seen a military like that, it had been the Wutai military that took over half the world. To the rest of the world, ShinRa's army was amazing; Wutai looked at them and went, "Oh, aren't you _cute_ , trying to be like us!...Go home."  
  
Which would have absolutely _galled_ President Shinra.  
  
And we all know what the results ended up being.


	2. The Naming of Cats is a Serious Matter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just where all those names came from...

And now we come to the Ultimania Author's Notes going into detail about the names! So if you wondered about any of the names in here...the wait is over! 

First off. 

I am a KANJI NERD. _And_ my electronic dictionary is trilingual, English, Japanese, and Chinese. This gave me room to play. And with Jie and his mom and their names, I _really_ got to let the kanji nerd in me come screaming out. 

So, with that caveat, let's begin. 

The people in TTYNKAP:

So, the names of the major characters in characters, pinyin (romanization), and zhuyin (bopomofo): 

Reno - 雷諾 [Léi Nuò, ㄌㄟˊ ㄋㄨㄛˋ] (Genked fresh off the Chinese Wikipedia.) 

Jie: 

Qian Jie Guang - 潛杰光 [Qián Jié Guāng,ㄑ一ㄢˊ ㄐ一ㄝˊ ㄍㄨㄤˉ] 

Wu Jie Yao - 吳傑耀 [Wú Jié Yào, ㄨˊ ㄐ一ㄝˊ 一ㄠˋ]

Jie's Mom: 

Qian Xiao Zhen - 潛篠稹 [Qián Xiǎo Zhěn,ㄑ一ㄢˊ ㄒ一ㄠˇ ㄓㄣˇ] 

Yang Zhao Xi - 楊照希 [Yáng Zhào Xī, 一ㄤˊ ㄓㄠˋ ㄒ一ˉ]  

When Jie and his mom fled Wutai, she changed their family name to "Qian," which is not an unusual name. But the meaning? It means "hidden." And as for the rest of his name, 杰 is a simplification and alternate character for 傑. (...there is another, more fangirl reason why I chose 杰 and 傑, but I'm going to pretend for a while that I'm not that big of a loser). The "Guang" (光 ) comes from "Yao" (耀) because the radical for "yao" (the part on the left side) is "guang" (light). 

And Auntie Qian? Her new name is pronounced in a way that is nigh-identical to "little truth" (xiǎo zhēn vs xiǎo zhěn [and, ok, to be nitpicky, that 3rd tone (falling and rising--your pitch basically goes the same way as the accent/tone markers do) in the "xiǎo" of "xiǎo zhěn" would change to a rising 2nd tone because of a tone samdhi to become "xiáo zhěn"]), and 稹 uses the old form of the character for "truth" (真) as a phonetic (section of a kanji that tells you how to pronounce it). 

...Yes, I thought about this way, way, _way_ too much.

Before I came up with Jie's mom original name, I admit to being lazy and taking my old name from when I studied Chinese--Fu Juan Yi. But it seemed a little "..." to end up naming a character I liked so very, very much after myself, even if it _was_ just because I knew it definitely sounded very Chinese--my people from Taiwan at the Japanese language school I went to actually told me the name was too "Taiwanese" for a foreigner to use. XD;;  So the "Fu" came from "Wu" and was the family name of one of my friends back in high school. I don't actually know if that's how her name is written in Chinese, but hey. 

I had been mainly having a problem with the family name--y'all would not _believe_ how many family names I went through. It started to be "Lin" but that was too much like "Li," and ditto with "Liu," the other name I liked because of the character Liu in Turandot, my favorite opera. I finally settled on "Luo," then looked and the character and went, "...fuck," because it's the same one as the "Ra" in "ShinRa." (That, BTW, is why Reno was so amused by his cover name--I had to use it, I just _had_ to). I thought about "Wang", the family name of one of my best friends, then went, "...I refuse to let idiots start snickering because they read it as 'wang'." (...you know, the way I do when I make fun of Wang Leehom, the singer I love to mock. Incessantly. But Leehom mockage is for another day, alas. *makes sadface at missing an opportunity to mock Leehom* Oh, but while on the mocking-Leehom riff, I should point out that the way the characters in Leehom's name are written in pinyin is... _Li Hong_. I think Wang Leehom is an utter poser (and I triple dog DARE him to sing that song where he proclaims he's 'not your average thug' and has "love for the ghetto" in Bed Stuy), which is why Reno's fake name was Li Hong.  Yes, I am small and petty in my hatred of Leehom, and _I'm OK with that._ :D ) 

Back on point, one day at work I was translating an article, and while trying to discover what some obscure Tang-dynasty post would be in English (yes, I have to translate _weird_ shit for work), I came across the wiki page for the Four Beauties of China--Xi Shi, Wang Zhao Jun, Diao Chan, and Yang Guifei. Look carefully, kiddies, and you'll see all of Jie's mom real name in there: Yang Zhao Xi. 

Mind you, I played around with the characters a bit to make them more name-friendly, namely "Xi" because the character in the name is the character for "west" (西), and I changed it to be the one in "hope" (希望, Ch: xi wang/Jp: kibou), and it means "rare" (so her name, Zhao Xi, is roughly "Shining rarity").  But yeah. That's where the references are. The only one I didn't use was Diao Chan, and that's because she, in all likelihood, wasn't a real person and was just made up for "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms." 

I damned near reconsidered the "Wang" bit for a name just because Wang Zhao Jun was said to be so bitchtastic she pissed enough people off that they got rid of her by marrying her off into someone in the boonies. 'Cause for serious, who does _that_ sound like? XD  But yeah, the whole "wang" problem. "Yang," I decided, would work, and would also be a little nod of sorts to another Final Fantasy game, FF4, which has a character named Yang. 

Now for the rather embarrassing side to where Jie and Jie's mom's false names came from. ^^;; 

The name "Qian" I got from a song by Nic Tse, "Qian Long Wu Yong"--Don't use the hidden dragon. I knew they were going into hiding, and when I had long ago looked up the hanzi to see how it was pronounced so I would know how the say the name of the song, I saw the notation in my dictionary for it being a surname. So I used the name "Qian" for their family names, because I knew it was a) feasible and b) would mean every time Jie said his new name, he would remember they are in hiding. His very name warns him to be careful. 

As for the rest of Jie's name...Yeah, so, uh, I'm a _screaming Jay Chou fangirl_. Big time. I make no bones about this.  I have all of his CDs, all of his concert DVDs, have a poster that is the cover of one of his CDs (shut up, it has a _fire-breathing_ _pterodactyl_ on it. C'mon!), have seen all of his movies but the dumb basketball one I refused to watch, sing his songs when I go to karaoke, have a playlist that has every single song he has ever written for him or someone else (because he started out a songwriter) in it, and the only reason I haven't been to any of his concerts is because my timing trying to get tickets SUCKS. 

This entire fic owes a BIG debt of gratitude to Jay Chou/Zhou Jie Lun for this fic. I mean, big time. And that's right, Zhou JIE Lun. I also like a singer named JJ Lin/Lin Jun JIE. Both of them are named Jie, but written with different kanji, 杰 and 傑 respectively, so I was like, "Hey!" because it suited my purposes--this way, my Jie could keep his name, but get a "new" one at the same time, because the kanji changed. With Jie's second name, Guang, I took it from the Jay Chou song "Zhi zhan zhi shang" (止戰之殤 [zhǐ zhàn zhī shāng] - The Casualties of Stopping War) because it's just a cool song and the first word of it is "guang" (light), and I knew it was OK as a name since I had seen that floating around as one. "Yao" was rigged in later to fit, with me and my electronic dictionary spending some quality time together, looking for a suitable name that contained the light radical. 

Side quest: Jay Chou Is My God

I'm going to tell y'all right now just how big a debt I owe to Jay Chou when it comes to TTYNKAP. When this story was in its _very_ early planning stages, I was trying to figure out how it was that Jie was going to die and what made the Qians leave Wutai, when "Ba, wo hui lai le" ( 爸我回來了 [bà wǒ huí lai le] - Dad, I've Come Back) came on--and this song is all about a kid who saw his father always beating his mother and hated it, and the adult he became--and suddenly, bang, there is was, the idea that Jie's mom had taken him and fled from an abusive home. But...something didn't quite sit right, and I kept thinking about it, especially since I figured it'd take something pretty damn extreme to make her flee the _country_. Which led to the idea that Jie had probably killed his father...so to protect her son, Jie's mom took him and fled. Once that hit me, I ran with it. But for a long time, I couldn't quite get it all to fit--why kill his father? Especially since he was probably getting clues from both parents that it was simply the way things were, the father is the head and filial piety and all that jazz. 

And again, Jay Chou comes in. Or rather, the movie he was in, "The Curse of the Golden Flower," came in. I don't want to give spoilers away, but there was a scene with the Empress and Prince Jie (I'm not kidding, that's his name; I _died laughing_ , but only because I figured they named the character that so Jay Chou wouldn't have any problems knowing who he was) and when he made his choice to support his mother rather than his father. I had watched a making-of where the director, Zhang Yimou, talked a lot about how Prince Jie's dilemma and choice were very Chinese, and how Prince Jie knew how it would end but had to chose the way he did anyway.  After hearing that and watching the movie again with what Zhang Yimou said in my mind and trying to readjust my own thinking (you know, get out of my American box some), my Jie suddenly made _sense_. It was like, *CLICK*.  The piece I had been missing to make my Jie a real little boy instead of a moving wooden puppet snapped into place so hard I swear I could hear it.

The final debt owed to Jay Chou comes from the aspect of how was I going to get the Qians killed. I originally figured Jie's dad came back and tried to take back his son, but once I decided to off the father, that was right out. So I figured it'd have to be one of Jie's relatives who had been searching for them. And one day when I was thinking about this, "Yi fu zhi ming" (以父之名 [yǐ fù zhī míng] - In the Name of the Father), a song Jay Chou did about the Italian mafia, came on. And I went, "Holy shit, THAT'S it! She ran because they were _mafia_!" The other aspects filled themselves in later, but the kernels of everything were inspired on different levels and at different times by Jay Chou. Who, BTW, you all need to listen to. Because he is teh win, and this fic would have been _crap_ without his influence. And yes, I AM that big of a screaming Jay Chou fangirl.  I _told_ y'all.

Oh, and the title of chapter 10, "失去 Shi qu [Losing It All]" comes from the Jay Chou song "Ye Qu" (夜曲 [yè qǔ] - Nocturne) and the verses: 

失去你 (shi qu ni) _Losing you_

愛恨開始分明 (ai hen kai shi fen ming)  _Love and hate start to become clear_

失去你 (shi qu ni) _Losing you_

還有什麼事好關心 (hai you shenme shi hai guan xin) _What else is there to care about?_

 

...*cough* I'll, um, tuck that unseemly fangirl away now. 

That's all for that little sidequest; back to our regularly scheduled nerddom! 

The Chapters:

Actually, since I brought up the title names, hey, let's go into those, too. The titles English don't completely, duh, match the Chinese titles; I was more going for feeling than anything else. Some do match--"Ben dan," for example, is "Stupid Egg." But "Hua pao" doesn't technically mean "Things that Go Boom"--it's much simpler, just "Fireworks." With the Chinese titles, though, I was trying to stick with using two-character, single word, names. I carried that over to the English, 'present' chapters, by giving them names that were only one word (even if I had to shoehorn).  No real reason, other than it amused me and I liked having to think around a limit. ^^;; 

A direct translation for all the titles are:

2 - Ben dan 笨蛋 [Stupid Egg] 

4 - Hua pao 花炮 [Fireworks] 

6 - Zhu yin 注音 [Zhuyin] - "zhuyin" and "bopomofo" are the same thing; "zhuyin" is the formal name and "bopomofo" is the informal, coming from the first five zhuyin 'letters' (kinda like how "alphabet" comes from "alpha, beta.") 

8 - Gong zuo 工作 [Work] 

10 - Shi qu 失去 [Loss] 

12 - Qian long 潛龍 [The Hidden Dragon] 

Weisheng 尾聲 \- 回家 [Return home]

 

The Places:

So I went into the names of the characters, but what about the cities and towns and provinces in Wutai? I...have spent a lot of time on these, because I am an anal-retentive nerd when it comes to writing and my wiki-fu is l33t. 

One thing to clear up first: wuzi, Wu clan, Wutai. 

wuzi: 吳[wú] 字[zì] 

the Wu clan: 武[wǔ] 家[jiā] 

Wutai: 五[wǔ] 臺[tái] (There are other kanji used for the name; this is way I saw it first and I didn't see the other ways until this was set--apparently they picked new bloody kanji when they did AC _and_ CC--so it's not just Aerith/Aeris that's a big pain in everyone's backside.) 

The Chinese wiki has/had 'Wutai' as the above 'five terraces'--so that's where I yoinked the idea of five provinces in Wutai. As for the Wu clan, I used a common surname from the 'wu' surnames because I'm cool like that. And the 'wu' in 'wuzi' I retconned in--originally I genked it from Wutai because sometimes creative I am not, then as I was stumbling across more history while translating wiki articles for work, I came across some Chinese history stuff, and plucked the 'wu' character from the Wu state of the Three Kingdoms period (see below to see where else I ripped off Three Kingdoms XD ), and seeing as the word for Chinese characters means "Han characters," where the Han are an ethnic group, I retconned the wu into that sort of thing (and used that character to get the 'Chochungese' word for wuzi in "A Hope in Hell," 'ouja'--that's the Korean reading). 

Since I brought up the five terraces... 

The Five Provinces (縣) of Wutai: 

Beizhou 北州縣 

Taishang 臺上縣 

Gwongnaam 廣南縣 

Chochung 朝中縣 

Yamato 大和縣 

 

Cities: 

Wutai 五檯 \- in Beizhou or Taishang; I'm actually still debating. 

Gingseng 境城 \- in Gwongnaam 

Daerimmun 大林門 \- in Chochung; see "A Hope in Hell" for more on Chochung. I swear, that crossover has turned internal canon, as hard as I fought with my brain not to. ^^;; 

Nankyo 南京 \- in Yamato. I had a brainfart with Nankyo; I thought of it in Japanese and then AFTERWARDS remembered 'Nanjing.' By then, it was established, so I couldn't retcon it back with "Nanto" (南都), which would have had the same meaning. I R DUM. ...although it does give it the extra 'creepy' factor if you look at the story I did, "Busadou," where Sephiroth has destroyed Nankyo, and you look at what the Japanese did to Nanjing during WWII (ref: "The Rape of Nanking"--I blame always seeing Nanjing romanized as Nanking [due to said 'Rape of Nanking'] and never seeing it in kanji until too late. BLEH.) 

Taoyuan - 桃源 \- From one of the Chinese paradises (like Shangri-la). 

Jiuyuan 九源 \- This references 九原, one of the names of Hell, but ties into the 'yuan' of "Taoyuan." And also ties into the 'secret' being hidden in the Jiuyuan. I really kinda wished I'd done all this research sooner; I'd have _totally_ named 'Beizhou' 'Jiuyuan' instead.Ahh, well. Hindsight is 20/20, and hell if I could have imagined I'd have ended up writing more of Wutai--or FF7--than just TTYNKAP. To make up for my durrrrr, I'm explaining around it by having Jiuyuan being an old name for the area, before the Kisaragi empire started (during the Kisaragi Empire, the names of the provinces were set)--kinda like how a lot of the areas in Japan have older names (ie, the prefecture I used to live in, Gunma, used to be Joumou. Both names, BTW, are _stupid_.) 

In a drabble I did, I accidently used the name "Chongjuan," when I should have used "Chongyuan" because it's in Jiuyuan. When I fix the drabble--which I will, one of these years--I'm going to correct the name. 

Random other places and things that get mentioned: 

The Wangxiang Pavilion/The Homeviewing Pavillion 望郷臺

Yin Long Temple/The Temple of the Silver Dragon 銀龍寺 

Quan Lu/The Quanlu Road/The Spring [Well] Road 泉路 

"The Annals of the Silver Dragon" (Yin Long Ji/Ginryuuji) 銀龍記 

"The Romance of the Five Kingdoms" (Wu Guo Yan Yi/Gokoku Engi) 五國演義 

I toyed very, very seriously with naming "The Annals of the Silver Dragon" "The Dream of the Silver Dragon," after the REEEEALLY famous Chinese novel "Dream of the Red Chamber." I was _so close._ I mean, really, really close.  But I went with "Annals" because of a) a friend's insistence and b) how "Annals" ties in with some classical Confucian texts.  And channeled my urge to rip of the titles of Chinese classics instead by totally ripping off "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" for the other famous novel of Wutai. Shame is for other folks. "Romance of the Five Kingdoms" tells the story of the first Kanagawa emperor unifying Wutai; "The Annals of the Silver Dragon" tells the story of the fall of the Kanagawa empire. 

While on the subject of names, "The Romance of the Five Kingdoms" and "The Annals of the Silver Dragon" are two of the "Three Classics" (三大名著) of Wutai.  And just because yes, I have no shame, at all, the other one is 北遊記 (Běi Yóu Jì/Hokuyuuki)--the Journey to the North. >XDDD

Wangxiang, Quan Lu, Jiuyuan all come from names for the Buddhist Hell. Taoyuan, however, comes from the Chinese utopia Taohuayuan (*nerd* In the Japanese Saiyuki, Chang'an is in Taohuayuan, not Shangri-la. Shangri-la comes from a novel written in English in the 1920s, Lost Horizon, and there was no Shangri-la in China until cities tried to cash in by claiming THEY were the Shangri-la of the novel. */nerd*). 

So. That's where all the names come from. There's a lot of stuff I didn't go into--like why the Temple of the Silver Dragon and the Homeviewing Pavilion are kept secret from ShinRa (not just ShinRa, actually; it's a secret going back to the end of the Wutai Warring Era). There's actually a reason for it; if I ever get around to it, I'm going to explain it all in the "Unparalleled Under Heaven" series that I really, really want to write--that one tells the story of the Wutai "Silver Dragon" (yay, my history nerd self will get to come out to play--I spent _two weeks_ just working out the characters for people's names, which will tell you how much I'm going to put into this. Because I'm a NEEEERD. 

And in another moment of Things Coming Together, the name 'Yang' ended up working really, really, REALLY well for the mafia family of that area, if you consider the 'Yang' of FF4 and how he was honorable and very protective--the Yang family was the one that protected the secrets of the area and did _whatever_ it took to keep them...originally. They still take taking care of the area very seriously, but they are still, well, a mafia family...but that came later). Life needs to slow down and I need to spend the month or three it'll take me to work out the historical timeline of Gaia. Then the month or three of background research to be able to properly write a story that would have taken place at least 500 years in the past. ...*cue hysterical, oh-god-why-do-I-do-this-to-myself laughter* Anyway, I have enough planned that you'll see references to it in Puppyverse, oddly enough. And in some other fic I've done, namely the Yuffie fic, "Bricks at the Devil." She mentions the "Homeviewing Pavillion;" she's talking about the Wangxiang Pavillion Rude mentions as being inaccessable in "Roadtrip." 


	3. The World of the Wutai Clans and How Don Corneo Fit In, Plus Tseng Getten Bitten in the Butt Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bit of an explainer of the mafia clans in Wutai.

The World of the Wutai Clans and How Don Corneo Fit In

First off, a bit on the three Wutai (mafia) clans: the Wu, the Li, and the Yang.

The Wu clan was the most powerful in Taishang and have influence in the rest of Wutai as well, with the exception of Beizhou and Yamato. This was because Beizhou already had two powerful clans: the Lis and the Yangs. (Yamato's really not germane to all of this, but yes, I thought it out if any of you want to know; their sphere of influence is over Yamato to the south, and the Wu and Yamamoto leave each other alone, because of the "don't start none, won't be none" mindset--neither clan sees any need to branch out into the other's territory, because no good would come of it.)

The Yang were the oldest clan; the Li were the young upstarts causing them problems. So both clans were fighting each other, and therefore weakening the other, and both ended up seeking an alliance with the Wu clan, since it was only a matter of time before the Wu came in anyway. They both sought a political alliance via marriage; the Yang offering, because that's what Jie's mother was, was chosen by Wu Shan Wen, for his own creepy purposes and because he figured the Yangs would probably cause fewer problems. So Yang Zhao Xi (Jie's mom) was chosen to be the wife of Gao Jun, the only son of Wu Shan Wen, when she was fourteen, and the wedding took place when she was fifteen. There was a concubinage system then, and Gao Jun already had concubines, but a wife hadn't yet been chosen for him. So Zhao Xi was made his wife over the concubines he had, which caused her nothing but problems, but was to be expected since it was a purely political marriage, designed to help unite the clans because this way any children she had would become the heirs to the Wu clan ahead of any others, and that was part of the condition the Yangs set out when they agreed. This gave the Yangs a lot of influence and potential power in the future to completely destroy the Li clan, leaving them with Beizhou, and ties to the most powerful clan family in the surrounding areas, which gave them insulation of sorts.

This was why it was so believable for everyone to think the Li clan had kidnapped and murdered Jie and his mom; they lost face when a Yang was chosen over a Li to be Wu Gao Jun's wife, and they were also losing their historical power and influence in the region. They were desperate, and there probably had been an upswing in attempts at assassination of a lot of people. Once the Wu heir was killed and his wife and child missing and presumed murdered, though, the Li were naturally assumed to be at fault, and then it was pretty much on between the Wu/Yang and the Lis.

As I said before, I deal badly with things that don't make sense. So another aspect that kind of bugged me about the game was what was someone named "Don Corneo" doing in Wutai? It seemed...really fuckin' odd. So, should any of you wonder, what I figure is this--after the Wu clan first got ripped up by Reno taking out a fair number of their guys in Wutai when he first got his revenge (and subsequently recruited into the Turks), they went back and were re-evaluating: namely, they had found out the Li clan had never kidnapped and murdered the heir and his mother, but that they had been played for fools by the Yang clan--because that is how they would have seen Jie's mom having an affair AND having passed off her bastard child as the heir, and then said kid actually having been the one to murder the next head of the Wu clan. The temporary head after Wu Shan Wen was badly hurt in Reno's blowing their shit up didn't take kindly to all of this, and extended the olive branch to the Li clan with one hand while severing ties with the Yang with the other. And the Lis, having been so weakened and been against the Yang for a long time would have seized on this chance to get rid of the Yang clan and exploit weakness in the Wu. So they arranged a few marriages, and the two clans, both of which had been weakened by years of fighting each other, decided to combine and get rid of the Yang clan--which is why, by the time this story takes place, there's a high level of integration between the Li and the Wu. The Li clan, when they started to lose power in Wutai, had begun expanding overseas instead, which is why in Midgar the Li clan was the best known with the most presence, but in Wutai, the Wu took center stage. By this point, they were one clan, but this separation continued, and it was advantageous of them to do so, given ShinRa.

Also by this time, they've done a damn good job of stamping out the Yangs. The Yang clan was actually in pretty bad shape by the time all this started, and were just barely holding on, since the Wu were bound and determined to destroy them for the dishonor done to his family.

Now, after everything in this fic, the Wu clan and the Li clan are pretty much gone--ShinRa has gone in and firebombed all of them to kingdom come, leaving precious few of either clan alive. The Yangs, though, are still alive, and they can see the writing on the wall--they're just barely clinging to life, but if they try to rise up now that there's a vacuum, ShinRa will likely come back in and firebomb them as well. Their best bet, they figure, is an alliance like the Li and Wu did...with a Midgarian Mafioso, even though it pains them to do it.

Enter Don Corneo, who took advantage of the vacuum left by the Wu/Li clan being wiped out more or less overnight.

So by the time the game has started, Don Corneo and the Yangs have an arrangement that's mutually beneficial to all of them, even though the Yangs aren't thrilled with it. I daresay they were just waiting for a chance to get rid of him...after they had milked him for all his resources and rebuilt themselves--they provided the space and the pretty women, and he provided the money and firepower to protect them as they rebuilt in the shadows.

Oh...and as for the other "hidden dragon" that Tseng referred to, when he was talking to Rude?

That's something that was in the Temple of the Silver Dragon. Do you remember that strange statue of the Double-headed Silver Dragon? The one that looked like it was holding a big, black materia. Well...where do you think the black materia came from? Tseng had no idea what was in the Temple of the Silver Dragon, but better believe once he found out it existed, he started doing his Turk thing to find out about it. When Reno and Rude were making their move on the Wu, Tseng was leading an attack on the Temple of the Silver Dragon, and THAT is how he got the Black Materia in the game. That was to be his new hidden dragon.

....So, yeah, the hidden dragon sort of bit him in the ass again. XD;;;


	4. The Psychology of Reno

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning! Don't read this until you have completely finished reading all of main The Things You Never Knew About People fic!

And now to tell y'all a little secret about Jie's mom: she was originally going to die, too. When I first planned this out, she and Jie were going to die that night--after all, they weren't around, and there had to be a reason for that. So yeah, the original plan was for her and Jie to die.

Only, I hadn't counted on really, really, really liking Jie's mom. When I realized I was going to kill Jie and her, I just couldn't do it. I also love Jie, and knew I was going to be depressed when I killed him...but would be in tears if I had to kill them both. So I wracked my brain, trying to save both of them and knowing that wouldn't be possible, but I could feasibly keep Jie's mom alive. In fact, it started to make sense when comparing how different Reno is in the game and Advent Children--he went from dropping a plate on a sector to trying to save kids from a monster rampaging the square. I figured, something had to have changed in his life, and if Jie's mom was alive and he met her again, it would help explain that change.

And Jie's mom, well, there is a reason why I could see her saying all of the "100 Things [Chinese] parents shouldn't say to their kids." She loves a whole, whole lot, but sweet Jesus if she doesn't have Bad Parent Mouth. >XD So she said the absolute wrong thing at the wrong time to Reno.

And I wanted some hope, dammit. And when I decided Jie's mom wouldn't die, the epilogues were born.

One reason I had for writing this wasn't just the fact that it was a rabid plotbunny, but to try to explain the disconnect between canon--Reno in FF7 is VERY different from the Reno of Advent Children, and, as that HUGE spiel up there about frickin' signs should show you, I deal badly with contradictions. I always want to find a way to explain this stuff, even if it takes some massive mental contortions to do it.

So once I decided Jie's mom wasn't going to die, this fic turned into reconciling the Renos. I couldn't really go into detail with my thinking in the fic, of course, but it basically boils down to this: game-Reno was still burdened by a lot of things, guilt over Jie's death and that almost unthinkable rejection from Jie's mom. It left him with a much, much darker view of the world; the world was a bad, bad place. He laughed and joked, but he never really let go of what he was carrying inside him. When you're bitter at the world, it's a lot easier to do things like, oh, drop a frickin' plate on a sector and not blink.

Advent Children-Reno, though, is a whole other person--one who has found out the world isn't as dark as he thought it was. A little bit of the old Reno, the one I wrote him as as a kid, started to come back--a bit of a goofball who's essentially a good person, if...twisted and cruel as well. A person capable of trying to save a bunch of kids. Reno's still a killer and has no problems with it, but he's not as cold-blooded as he was--part of him is back to that goofball kid trying to charm his friend's mom so she won't smack him upside the head. This is the Reno who has his family back.


End file.
